Jerry Seinfeld on Life

"Don't you hate "To Be Continued"s on TV? I mean the whole reason you watch a TV show is because it ends. If I wanted a long, boring story with no point to it, I've got my life."

"What I am good at -- and what every comedian is good at -- is knowing how to carefully manage an audience's attention span."

"I've figured out that the "non-event" is the best part of life."

"The idea of bosses and employees is just hilarious to us ! It's such a typically human attempt to organize what is un-organizable: life."

"The comedian studies himself; the actor studies other people. The comedian wants to be himself; the actor wants to be anyone but themselves."

"Being a dad is-- y'know, it's a surfboard on a rainbow. You're gettin' all you can handle of life."

"I like the brutality of stand-up and the simple, boiled-down "it either lives or dies" of a joke."

"I still think everything has its life cycle and if you respect it, people enjoy it longer."

"I have a lot of respect for as a craft. I don't see it as just a stepping-stone. I mean, it's a hard life in some ways. But I have a fascination for it."

"I think we deal with fear more viscerally than almost anyone! I mean, you feel the audience's fear, your own fear. The whole show is about quelling fear!"

"I like that boil the whole guy's life down to "Invented the ballpoint-pen spring."

"Somebody was sayin' the other day about "You gotta be funny, or they'll turn on you!" And I go "They should turn on you!" It's a very humbling life, at any level."

"Do you think that's how life ends? That you just-- really just go "It's enough. I had enough." I know when my time comes, that how I'm gonna feel. I already feel that way!"

"I think spending your life trying to dupe innocent people out of hard-won earnings to buy useless, low-quality, misrepresented items and services is an excellent use of your energy!"

"The way I look at life, basically, is: it's exhausting. And... Doing-- Being busy is exhausting; doing nothing is exhausting. No matter what you do... as a human -- on Earth -- it's exhausting."

"Dads feel they know enough about the world to start their own civilization. That's what the family is to them. The fathers think "The hell with life! I can invent my own people. My own rules for fashion. My own health and diet."

"Comedy is so much closer to sports than the arts. Stand-up comedy is very, very close to sports: in the life of it, and the "do or die" of it. Nobody cares how many hits you've had. There's guys on base now."

"I would go so far as to say that was the key to the entire show, was that we really felt like together we were funny, and then the audience felt it, and that's how you can somehow catch lightning in a bottle."

"Stand-up is a physical challenge. It is a mental challenge, but equally physical. And when you're young, of course, it's a breeze! 'Cause you're blessed with youth. Y'know? The ultimate weapon is youth, in life."

"I don't see people in the audience, I'm in an ultra-focused state when I'm onstage, I only go by sound - I listen to the audience but I don't look at anything in particular. I'm really visualizing the stuff I'm talking about."

"That last , I really felt like-- was really a gift to the audience, 'cause I was really done after the eighth. But I decided to take a deep breath and try and do one last season, because the audience support that we enjoyed was just phenomenal."

"Stand-up is the only thing that I knew -- that I could be sure -- that I-- if I was doing it, and audiences were responding well, that I wasn't cheating. 'Cause there is no way to cheat, in stand-up! It's the naked-est, purest thing in the world."

"Thank you all for this great honor, and for all your great work. I hope it makes you happy, as you have made me happy for this five minutes of my life, which will last until I get to the edge of this stage and it hits me that this was all a bunch of nonsense."

"That takes a lot of work: to set up six different scenes that are not on stage, plus do a stage show in front of an audience. It's a production issue that the average fan wasn't aware of, but I think they appreciated-- It gave the show a vitality and an expansiveness."

"You don't need to die for what you want to accomplish. And that's what TM is about. I came up with the line that "TM is like you have a cell phone and someone gives you the charger... and you go Oh... this is-- now, I can keep using this thing and it will work all the time!'."

"Neat and clean. That's the way I want to live. My idea of the perfect living room would be the bridge on the Starship Enterprise: big chair, nice TV, remote control. That's why Star Trek really was the ultimate male fantasy. Hurtling through space in your living room, watching TV."

"When you're little, your life is up. The future is up. Everything you want is up. "Wait up! Hold up! Shut up!" "Mom, I'll clean up! Let me stay up!" For parents, of course, it's just the opposite: everything is down. "Just calm down!" "Slow down!" "Come down here!" "Sit down!" "Put that down!"

"I'm not a big fan of the "long set" in comedy. Guys like to go on, like to do an hour and 45 minutes. The audience will win if you stay out there too long! I want to go out. I want to get you down. I want to beat the snot out of you and get out of there before you realize that I... beat the odds!"

"That is the feeling of life: you've got to go, all the time. You get to your job, what is your first thought? "I want to get home." But you get home, you feel cooped up; you've got to get out. You're out, it's late; you've got to get back. Wherever you are, you've got to get the hell out of there!"

"The whole supermarket itself is designed to break down your sense of having any life outside the supermarket. It's like a casino: there's no clocks, no windows, no easily-accessible exits. You ever not buy anything in the supermarket and try to get out of there? It's impossible. There's no way out."